In Italy without interwebs

Hey all! We are in Italy and without Internet. I am writing this from Brenda's iPhone which is probably costing about 20 euro a letter. I hope you are all well and I will talk to you when we are stateside. Ciao!

Moving = Stress

Hey all! We're moving. In case you don't believe me, I've included a picture.

We've spent the last week watching the World Cup and getting ready for the move. (Too bad about the US but at least Germany is still in it!) In addition to moving out tomorrow, Brenda is flying to London for an audition and will be coming back on Thursday. We fly to Rome on Sunday - where Brenda will be taking a weeks worth of Italian language classes - and then on to Des Moines on July 10th. We are both ready to be stateside.

I hope you are all having a great week and enjoying your air conditioning. Oh, how I miss air conditioning. Talk to you next week!

Packing time

Hey All! I slept, I ate breakfast and I have a cup of coffee in front of me - I am ready to blog.

One week from now we will be homeless. We will be mere vagabonds trying to survive in Europe until we can make our way back to the US for summer vacation. The last week in our apartment will be spent discovering how much stuff we've accumulated in our first two years in Germany. One good thing is that we won't be taking any of our furniture with us since we sold it to our landlord. I think, however, that we may have picked up a few other things along the way that won't fit into the 6 suitcases we had with us when we first arrived in Germany.

Brenda finished performing La Giuditta on Monday. They had 6 shows in 9 days which, for opera, is a lot. Below I've included a review of the show. It will give you a chance to work on your German.

The show I'm in, Palestrina, opened on Sunday. I've got one of those roles that is over so fast that you don't really even know the scene has started until you're walking off stage. I always enjoy performing, though, regardless of how much stage time I get.

Well, the apartment isn't packing itself so I had better get going. I hope you are all having a great week and I'll talk to you soon!

Yum, Indian food

Hey All! We just got back from eating some Indian food with the McCowns. We had a blast with them, as usual, but because of that it is a little too late for me to write the blog you deserve. I'll write more tomorrow as I enjoy my morning coffee. Until then, have a great night!

Fußball

Hey All! I just got back from rehearsal and let me tell you, it is gorgeous outside. The temperature is in the mid 60s, there is a mild breeze and there isn't a cloud in the sky. This is my kind of weather.

My rehearsal was fun. We were on stage for the first time tonight, which I really enjoyed. It's great to sing in a big hall and it always helps to move around on the real set. The show opens Sunday so I'll be sure to tell you how it goes next week.

La Giuditta, the opera Brenda is currently singing, opened on Saturday. There are only 4 singers in the cast of La Giuditta and, therefore, each singer gets a lot of opportunity to sing. Brenda has 6 arias of her very own which, I might add, were all beautifully sung on Saturday night. The audience loved the show and, as far as we can tell, the critics did too. If you would like to check out some of the photos from the production you can do so here.

In other news, Brenda and I watched a whole soccer (or "football" to the rest of the world) game the other night. Apparently, there is this thing called the World Cup going on in South Africa. Who knew? We watched the Germans destroy the Australians and it was quite enjoyable. We were, of course, rooting for Germany. And speaking of things Germany has won recently, you should check out the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Well, that's pretty much all I've got for this week. Brenda and I are moving out of our apartment at the end of the month and we're pretty excited about it. Not that our apartment is bad or anything, it will just be nice to have a change of pace.

Oh, one more thing. I'm sure you've noticed that I've gotten into the habit of posting pictures each week. Well, we didn't take any pictures this week but I've included one anyway. Have a great week!

The leaning tower of Pisa.

Time to work on my tan

Hey All! Another week has come and gone and that means it is time to give you an update on the goings-on in Germany. You may not know this but I scan through the previous week's post before I write the new one and am usually shocked at how much has changed in such a short time. For this week, however, I could probably have copied and pasted last week's post and that would have sufficed. Dan and Whitney are still here, Brenda is still in rehearsals and we're still looking forward to summer vacation.

A few things have changed, though. I had my first rehearsal for my four-line role in Palestrina today. I'm happy to report that rehearsal went well. In other news, Brenda opens her opera on Saturday. Dan, Whitney and I sat in on an hour or so of Brenda's rehearsal today and it all sounded great to us. I'll fill you in on how the performance goes next week.

Dan and Whitney head back to America tomorrow. We've really enjoyed having them here and have done our best to convince them to move to Germany. Come to think of it, YOU should really think about moving to Germany. The schnitzel is amazing.

I've included a few pictures below. The first two were taken in the beautiful Rüdesheim/Assmannshausen area. The third was taken at the botanical garden in Frankfurt. People can rent row boats and paddle around for a while and that's just what we did. As you can tell we've been having terrible weather.

That's all I've got for this evening. I hope you are all doing well and I'll talk to you next week!

A few words from Broy

Hey All! You'll be happy to hear that Dan and Whitney made it to Frankfurt in one piece (well, two pieces if you want to be picky about it). We've already done a bit of traveling and have certainly exposed them to a lot of our favorite German cuisine. I've posted a couple of pictures below. The first is self explanatory and the second was taken in the picturesque town of Marburg. That's all I've got for this week but I'm happy to pass the blog baton on to Brenda for the rest of this post. I hope you're well and I'll talk to you next week!

Oh boy! The blog has suddenly changed voices! Now it's much higher, and doesn't make as much sense (I do tend to play crazy people you know...). :-) As Chad stated above, our friends Dan and Whitney are visiting. It's been super fun! The sad part is that I've been having about six hours of rehearsal per day for an opera called La Giuditta, so I haven't been able to give them the love and devotion they deserve. We open the opera on June 12th (yikes! that's coming up fast!) and it's been an interesting process. The opera was written in 1726, and the director has us switching between modern movements and more baroque movements. Now, the singers involved in this show are not baroque movement specialists, but thankfully we've had a choreographer to help us along! It's been a completely different process than the other shows I've been involved in at Frankfurt, and that definitely keeps me on my toes! I'm very excited for the premiere. I sure do love my life as an opera singer. :-)

That said, I'm already looking forward to my summer vacation! Chad and I haven't made any definitive plans, but we are hoping to spend some time in Italy before we come back to the States. I'd like to revamp my Italian language skills, since it's been 7 years since I spent a summer in Italy studying the language! One other cool thing about the rehearsal process for Giuditta has been the abundance of different native languages. Our director speaks French, Italian and English, and rehearsals are conducted in English, since that's the most common second language for people. However, the choreographer is German, but he speaks French as well, so the director speaks in French to him, but the choreographer speaks in German to me. Our conductor is Italian, so there's also some Italian flying around! I still love hearing four different languages every day, and it makes me want to focus on really strengthening my languages!

Well, I think I'll end it there, and spend some more time with our guests! I'm hoping to post a blog entry on my website when my schedule dies down a bit. Of course the website needs to be updated as well... Ahh, I'll think about that later! Hope you're all well! Much love!